You know things are getting bad when Fox News gets in on the act. John McCain has not held a press conference for one month. Sarah Palin has held a single press conference. They cry about attacks, but they are unwilling, or unable, to defend their own positions.
For a candidate who once railed against “stale soundbites, staged rallies and over-managed messages,” John McCain seems to have turned over a new leaf.
Today marks the four-week anniversary since McCain held his last press conference (8/13 in Birmingham, MI) and three weeks since his last public town hall meeting (8/20 in Las Cruces, NM).
McCain’s new campaign strategy: staged rallies with thousands of supporters. Since announcing Sarah Palin as his VP choice on August 29, McCain’s has appeared at 11 rallies with his new running mate where both members of the ticket delivered a 10-15 minute stump speech.
While shifting to rallies is inevitable for any party nominee during a general election, McCain has always touted town hall meetings and interactions with the press as reasons for his success.
Throughout the spring and summer, then-presumptive nominee McCain enabled the public and the media an opportunity to question him on an almost daily basis, holding town hall meetings open to supporters and critics and conducting press conferences and media sessions aboard his bus.
Though he was also criticized at the same time for lacking a coherent message and constantly undercutting his own message by reacting to the news of the day and sometimes critiquing his own campaign. Even during interviews with national press in recent weeks McCain has been thrown off message (e.g. the houses controversy and an awkward TIME Magazine interview).
The McCain campaign is doing everything they can to control the message. McCain and Palin and just repeating the same simple script every day, even though much of it has been debunked. Meanwhile, conservatives sit back and drink up the story that the McCain campaign is peddling. All the McCain campaign has to do is attack the media, and conservatives fall right into line.
